Adaptive HTTP streaming technology (such as Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Adobe Dynamic Streaming over HTTP or MPEG DASH) is being implemented to handle increasing consumer demands for streaming video from Over The Top (OTT) applications on OTT content servers (e.g., movies/TV on demand) to User Equipment nodes (UEs) (e.g., such as set-top-boxes, multimedia computers, and wireless terminals) across a core network.
Internet service providers (ISPs) have long struggle with how to provide a sufficient Quality of Service (QoS) level to their customers in view of bandwidth limitations in their networks. ISPs have attempted to manage use of their network resources by various strategies for charging customers for consumption, limiting bandwidth provided to particular customers, and banning certain types of network traffic.
Some existing network management schemes allow UEs to attempt to take as much bandwidth as desired for HTTP adaptive streaming from a content provider regardless of how much bandwidth is actually available to the content provider. UEs and content providers may only “adapt” to changing network conditions when the available bandwidth is fully consumed. This can be a problem for content providers who may want to control the bandwidth they provide to individual streams.
Some existing network management schemes implemented by ISPs are controversial, both with customers and with government agencies. Laws that will enforce “Net Neutrality”, which will ban ISPs from restricting bandwidth usage by content types, have been enacted by the Netherlands and are being considered in many other countries. Consequently, streaming media continues to disproportionately utilize ISP network resources and IPSs do not have adequate network management schemes to regulate such usage.